Boys arrested for strangling classmate to death

A Class-8 student from Sonepat was allegedly strangled to death by his classmates, as he had been insisting one of the suspects to return his cell phone.

The police on Sunday arrested the suspects, whose names are being withheld as they are juveniles, on a charge of murder.

Subham, 14, a student of CRZ Senior Secondary School in Sonepat, had lent his cell phone to one of the suspects a week ago, Sonepat senior superintendent of police (SSP) Arun Singh Nehra said. "The victim had been asking his classmate repeatedly to return the handset. On Friday, the suspect called Subham at the school's backyard to collect the cell phone," the SSP said.

On reaching the spot, the suspect and his friend strangled Subham with a cable wire to death and hid the body in the bushes near the school's boundary wall, the police have said.

The victim's father, Suresh, said that as his son did not return from school on Friday he had lodged a missing report.

After search, the police recovered the body on Saturday night. The body was handed over to Subham's family after the post-mortem examination at the Civil Hospital, Sonepat.

Suresh, who is a retired bank official, said: "We had no inkling that Subham possessed a cell phone. He may have purchased the handset from his pocket money."